


Five Times Luna's Memory Totally Fails Her (And One Time It Only Kind of Fails Her)

by sartiebodyshots



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sartiebodyshots/pseuds/sartiebodyshots
Summary: Since the accident, Luna's memory is basically nonexistent.  Sometimes, it's more of a pain than other times.  And every once in a while?  She gets the barest hints of something still there.





	

She wakes up cold and alone, tubes down her throat and restraints around her arms and legs.  She thrashes and fights and chokes, not sure what’s happening, but sure that she has to flee.  Something has gone terribly wrong.  

A prick in her arm fills her with drugs that soothe her and they take the tubes out of her throat.  

“Where am I?” she coughs.  “Let me go.”

The doctor, a bland looking man, looks at her with compassionate eyes that don’t sit quite right in his face.  “You’ve had an accident.  You need to relax.”

Her body does as he says, even though that’s not what she wants to do.  Everything in her still screams to run, but that screaming is so distant now.  She lays back, muscles going slack.  

Her brain is fuzzy.  It’s not just the drugs.  There’s a great yawning chasm where her memories should be.  She can’t remember her name, her job, or anything else.  

“I can’t remember…” she murmurs.

She can feel the information just at the edge of her consciousness.  She reaches for it eagerly, but something gets in her way.  It fills her with a sickening dread and she retreats from it, too weak to fight on.  

“You were in an accident,” bland man says.  “You hit your head.  There may be damage to your memory.”

“Who am I?”

“Your name is Arlunia E’ron.  You’re a translator with the Republic,” bland man says.  

It doesn’t sit right.  The Republic, she remembers that.  She wants to protect the Republic.  That part feels right.  But the rest of it… 

Before she can think of much more, the drugs knock her out cold.

* * *

There are a lot of things about Carth that Luna isn’t fond of.  He’s pushy, sexist, and has a paranoid streak as wide as an asteroid.  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if there was someone to act as a buffer between them, but after a few days of just the two of them together, she’s had more than her fill.  

However, his paranoia (and maybe his military training) have given him a keen memory.  That’s certainly something that she’s envious of.  Ever since her accident at  _ what was that place called? _ she can’t remember even the simplest details about herself.  The things that have happened since then are all fairly clear, but everything before that is vague shadows and the occasional feeling.  It’s just as frustrating as Carth is.  

Luna lets Ajuur set up the fight with Bendak Starkiller over Carth’s objections.  They need the credits desperately and they can get money from both the betting and the bounty.  The dual payouts are too tempting to resist.  

“He’s a killer, Luna,” Carth protests.  

“I know.  That’s why I’m doing this,” Luna says.  “Both hutts pay me for killing him, and we have enough credits to buy all the supplies we need.”

“Unless you get your head blown off,” Carth points out.

“Not going to happen,” Luna says confidently, polishing her vibroblade so it gleams.  

“You do a lot of fighting professional killers?” Carth asks.  

There’s a chasm where her memory should be.  She can fight and fight well, much better than one might expect from a translator.  Going on feelings isn’t her preferred way of doing things- at least not things that could get her killed- but she doesn’t have anything else to go on.

Luna laughs and shrugs, as if it’s nothing.  “It’s never too late to start.”

Carth sighs, grumbling under his breath about something or another.  What else is new?

* * *

Luna sees Bastila’s face for the first time, unconscious and behind a cage.  Or at least, she assumes the woman is Bastila. 

Seeing her face feels like a punch in the gut, and she doesn’t know why.  She feels a thousand feelings at once: outrage, joy, respect, and so many things that she doesn’t even have a word for.  Like meeting an old friend or an old enemy, except she doesn’t have either, and she can’t imagine that she had met any Jedi before her accident.  

While this has become somewhat common since her accident, the sudden surge of feelings brought on by some unknown stimuli, it’s never been so strong.  She almost begins to approach the cage before she realizes that she still has a match to win.  

The familiar feeling increases after the match and after Brejik’s betrayal.  Bastila is so sure and confident in battle, and it resonates somewhere inside of her, even as Bastila berates her.  It makes it hard to really care about the verbal lashing.  

Late that night, Luna lays in her bunk and, despite the wrongness she feels whenever she tries, works to remember where she met Bastila.  She comes up with nothing, so she sighs and goes to sleep.  

* * *

The doctors had given her her service records.  Nothing too impressive, but not terrible, either.  Perfectly average, except for the number of languages she speaks.  Nothing in her files rings any bells, no matter how many times she reads them over.  The datapad was destroyed on the Endar Spire and she’s too embarrassed to message the doctors for a replacement.  It’s been months since she lost her memories.

She’d sit for hours, reading and rereading them as she waited for something to resonate within her.  The doctors had said that most of her memories were gone, but she had never quite come to believe them.  There’s a buzzing somewhere in the back of her head that might be nothing but might be everything- or at least more than she has now.  

So when Mission asks where she learned to hack a computer like  _ that _ , Luna has the answer right on the tip of her tongue.  It’s like answering a question on a test that she’s memorized but doesn’t actually understand, but it’s enough to satisfy Mission while they’re getting shot at on Tatooine.  

At least until they’re safely back in the Ebon Hawk, hanging out together in Mission’s room.  The girl has been through a lot in the short time that Luna has known her, and even though she doesn’t know what to say, she does know that she doesn’t want to leave her alone.  

Instead of talking about what’s happened, they’re sharing hacking tips.  Mission has seen systems that Luna could only dream of.  In return, Luna gets to share the methods that she knows to get around electronic security.  

“Didja have fun?  Learning how to do all this?” Mission says.  “I mean, it’s fun learning from you, so I bet it’d more fun with lots of others.”

Luna reaches back into her memories, trying to find something funny to share.  She’s not surprised when she finds nothing.  

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Luna says, more harshly than she intends.

Mission pulls away a little bit.  “Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude.”

“It’s okay,” Luna says, voice softening as she casts around for an excuse.  “I just… didn’t have a good time.”

Hey, it  _ could _ be the truth.

“Oh, sorry,” Mission says.  “At least we’re having a good time now, right?”

“Right!” Luna agrees.

They go back to working in pleasant harmony, but the disquiet over her memories (or lack thereof) remains.  

* * *

Juhani makes her heart flutter.  Her passion, her strength, her talent.  Some indefinable quality.  She is a beautiful woman, and the more time they spend together, the more stupid the Jedi rules about detachment seems.  

This, of course, brings up a whole host of issues.  

Sure, she obviously doesn’t have a wife or a serious girlfriend, or else the doctor would’ve told her, but is there someone in her past?  Is she going to dock at a spaceport and have a woman approach her, claiming to be her lover?  

It’s a romantic tale, in a way.  She can picture in her mind’s eye: there’s just a little bit of fog making everything seem eerie and mysterious as the woman approaches.  Her eyes widen when she sees Luna, and they embrace, Luna’s memories rushing back upon reuniting with her love.  

But it’s also unrealistic.  There’s probably nobody out there who cares about her.  She is alone in the galaxy, apart from the crew she’s assembled on the Ebon Hawk.  

That’s not as bad as it could be, Luna decides when Juhani catches her eye across the room and smiles.  The sight makes her stomach flutter and face flush and if  _ this _ doesn’t resonate with whatever memories might still be in her head, they just must not be there.  Maybe, for once, that’s not  _ so _ bad.

* * *

Luna taps at the computer diagnostic screen moodily.  She’s trying to figure out how to boost the hyperdrive.  

Carth says that they’re working at peak efficiency and that she’s wasting her time, but she knows that there’s a way.  It’s something she can’t quite remember, but she’s used to that feeling.   

Normally, she shies away from prodding at the gaps in her memories.  Something inside of her screams out in wrongness when she tries.  That feeling isn’t worth contending with when it comes to trying to figure out where she learned how to fix an engine, but it is worth contending with so that she can be  _ right _ .  

She’s solved a similar problem before, worked with a similar system.  All she has to do is push through the fog of her own mind and find the solution.  The memories are there- at least some of them.  She knows it.  

Then, she sees a young man in her mind’s eye.  There’s a bright smile on his face as the wind ripples through his hair.  He’s working on a computer, tapping away but still looking right at her.  They’re joking about something, together.  

The light from the sun shines down on him, his strong jaw casting a shadow.  It almost looks like Dantooine, except she never served on Dantooine and she can’t imagine why she would ever visit.  They’re both happy, though, wherever they are.  It’s a good day.

Luna knows she knows the man so well.  He’s someone close to her.  A brother?  A close friend?  That feels right, yet doesn’t.  Something else, something more.  

The snapshot disappears before she has the chance to analyze it for anymore information about her previous life.  But it proves something to her.  At least some portion of her memory is intact.  


End file.
